Pixel 2 XL: Blue Shift Blues

Google took the world by storm with their recent announcement and quick release thereafter of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL phones. However, in recent weeks, customers and tech enthusiasts have begun to find that the display on the Pixel 2 XL might not be the godsend that they had thought it would be.

Forums like Reddit, Android Central, and Facebook have amassed several reports of burn-in color and blue shift issues with the Pixel 2.The main accusation is that the new Pixel 2 XL’s OLED displayed images burn permanently into the screen.There have also been reports of a severe blue color shift when viewing the screen at intermediate angles.

So far, Google has acknowledged the complaints but claims that there is no apparent issue with the screens, and that the blue shift is natural for an OLED display. Here is a response from Google’s Vice President of Product Management, Mario Queiroz:

“Our investigation so far has given us confidence that our displays are as great as we hoped they would be, though we’re also taking steps to address the concerns we've heard.”

Google seems confident that their screen isn’t necessarily any worse than others. In support of this, they extended their manufacturing warranty to 2 years. It’s also worth noting that they have since released a software update which allows users to switch between screen color profiles. This lets users choose to make colors more vivid. Pixel 2 users may even pick a more deeply saturated “boosted mode” to really amp up the color. However these color profiles aren’t resolving the issues being reported.

So far, we’re not able to undoubtedly say whether these issues are due to poor manufacturing or a simple side effect of newer OLED technology, but what is causing much of the panic is the lack of quality control. There are some reports from users claiming they’re experiencing almost no blue shift, even at unflattering angles, while others are seeing severe blue shift at even slight five to twenty-five degree tilts. This feels like a sign that the displays are not “working as intended,” like Google has claimed.

The poor saturation could be due to a different color space being used for these screens. Seang Chau, Google’s Vice President of Engineering, has this to say on the matter:

“Out of the box, the Pixel 2 XL display defaults to sRGB + 10%. This is the sRGB gamut, expanded by 10% in all directions to make it slightly more vibrant. Humans perceive colors as less vibrant on smaller screens, such as on a smartphone, so we chose this for aesthetic reasons.”

If you take a look at the following graph, you can see the sRGB color space in the Pixel 2 XL’s display represented by the yellow triangle. This is the 10% boost of color that the Pixel 2 XL offers over a regular sRGB color space (black triangle).

For comparison, we ran our own color gamut test and found similar results across multiple Pixel 2 XL’s. In testing the color spaces on the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, we found that they all exceed the sRGB gamut, so Google isn’t really showing off much by touting these facts.

Chau also mentions the following:

“All OLED screens exhibit a degree of image retention (short-term) or burn-in (permanent) over their lifetime, starting the moment they are first powered on. This is also sometimes referred to as “differential aging” in the display industry. It appears as a faint outline of content on the screen from a previously displayed graphic. We’ve received reports of Pixel 2 XL devices exhibiting image retention on the screen and have been actively investigating them.”

While this does help us to understand how OLED’s work in smartphones, since we’re used to a traditional LCD display, this doesn’t offer much insight into what’s really going on behind the scenes in the production of these screens. Unfortunately, until Google recognizes this as a legitimate issue rather than a few sporadic complaints, we won’t know much more.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks as this and other discussions unfold around Google’s new flagship devices.